


sheithnewyear collection

by narada-talis (sarensen)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Fluff, Found Family, Future Fic, Kid fic (sort of), M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, New Years, Post-Season/Series 07, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, background allurance, collection, event fics, kosmo is the goodest boy, s02e01 missing scene, season 8 does not exist for the purposes of this collection, sheithnewyear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-02 18:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17268968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarensen/pseuds/narada-talis
Summary: A collection of short drabbles written for thesheithnewyear event.Day 1 (New Year's): Shiro visits a shrine for the Japanese New Year tradition of hatsumoude. Keith watches.Day 2 (Vacation): Turns out even the best pilot in the galaxy gets nervous sometimes.Day 3 (Family): To everyone's surprise, Keith turns out to be really good with children.Day 4 (Kosmo): Keith can't always be there for Shiro. Sometimes, he finds other ways.Day 5 (Free day): For a single, perfect moment, they know peace.Day 6 (The past): The day Shiro realizes he's in love with Keith, he nearly dies. Keith doesn't let him.Day 7 (The future): A few things change. Some never do.





	1. 初詣 -hatsumoude-

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Day 1 (New Year's)_  
>  **初詣 -hatsumoude-**  
>   
>  Summary:
>
>> They’re alone here, tucked away at the head of a small path in the mountains close to the house Shiro grew up in. Most of the area had been destroyed in the invasion. The rest of the world rebuilt, but not here. Not the shrine. Keith prefers it forgotten. It’s quiet, and peaceful, and perfect. Their own little hidden sanctuary of rubble and ice. 
>> 
>> What happens up here is between them and the stars.  
> 

The shrine itself is mostly rubble now; wooden bones and flaking gold and the splintered heads of statues - a testament to the undiscerning destruction wrought by Sendak’s forces.   
  
The red shrine gates, though -  _torii_ , Shiro called them - are still perfectly intact. Keith’s seen photographs of similar shrine gates, unharmed even after the violence of the old World Wars. They have a habit of surviving. They remind Keith of Shiro. 

Keith’s breath steams a white cloud in the cold. Snowflakes flutter and shimmer all around him in the moonlight, a white blanket underfoot that muffles all sound except the crunch of Shiro’s footsteps where he makes his way toward the shrine.   
  
They’re alone here, tucked away at the head of a small path in the mountains close to the house Shiro grew up in. Most of the area had been destroyed in the invasion. The rest of the world rebuilt, but not here. Not the shrine. Keith prefers it forgotten. It’s quiet, and peaceful, and perfect. Their own little hidden sanctuary of rubble and ice.   
  
What happens up here is between them and the stars. 

Shiro looks so much like he was made for this moment in time: silver hair and grey kimono like the hues of the black forest at night, with the ruined shrine in front of him and the vivid red gates behind. He looks like a painting. He looks like something from Keith’s dreams.   
  
Keith hangs back, feeling out of place in his torn black jeans and hoodie.   
  
He watches Shiro bow and clap, fiddling with the small pouch in his pocket. He runs the pad of his thumb over the texture of the brocaded silk, wondering if Shiro will like it. Wondering if it’s even the right gift to give. He doesn’t know anything about Japanese culture, and with the war, there hasn’t been enough time to learn.   
  
Somewhere in the distance, the digital bell in the town center tolls in the changing of the year. There are fireworks, no more than muffled thuds and dim rainbow silhouettes in the snow from this distance.   
  
Shiro makes his way over to the barren and broken tree line, snow crunching, and stops in front of Keith. 

White clouds of their breath mingle between them. Keith presses the small pouch into Shiro’s Altean hand, wrapping giant metal fingers around it gently.  
  
“An  _omamori_?” Shiro’s voice is somehow still quiet and gentle even when it’s the only sound in the world.   
  
“To keep you safe,” Keith explains.

“Don’t need it. You keep me safe.” **  
**

Keith bundles forward into Shiro’s waiting arms, feeling small in the face of this responsibility. “Shiro… I won’t always be here…”

He feels Shiro’s lips move against his hair. “There’s no reality in which you wouldn’t find a way. That’s what I love about you.”

Shiro seems to feel a lot more confident about that than Keith does, so Keith lets it go, allows the words to drift up to the stars like the misty clouds of their breath in the cold.

Later, they’ll sit together on the hill beneath the broken trees and watch the sun rise. Later, Keith will close his eyes against the warm golden rays and burrow in under Shiro’s arm and forget about the war and the destruction and wish this moment could last forever. Later, Shiro will tell him he loves him and Keith will wish he could put the words in a little box and keep them safe where they will never change and never fade and never end.

Right now, none of that matters because Shiro is kissing him, and the tip of his nose is so cold against Keith’s cheek but he doesn’t care because Shiro’s chest is broad and warm and he’s hugging Keith so tightly his feet aren’t even fully on the ground.

This is their first New Year together, but if the gods are listening, and Keith prays they are, it won’t be their last.


	2. one fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Day 2 (Vacation)_   
>  **one fear**
> 
>  
> 
> Summary:
>
>> Shiro blinks. “Keith. Are you… you’re not… scared, are you?”
>> 
>> Keith fixes him with a Look. Any other person might wilt under the weight of that glare, but not Shiro. He knows when Keith is hiding something.
>> 
>> Shiro considers this information. “I mean. You’re… the best pilot in the galaxy. You _can’t_ be afraid of flying.”
>> 
>> “It’s different when it’s not me doin’ the flying,” Keith grits out, shifting in the small seat.  
> 

“I still say we should have taken the Lions,” Keith says, fiddling with his seatbelt again.   
  
Shiro turns his gaze away from the view of the airport through the little window and pauses. Keith is tense, neck muscles cording and knuckles turning slightly white where they grip the seatbelt lock.   
  
Shiro blinks. “Keith. Are you… you’re not… scared, are you?”  
  
Keith fixes him with a Look. Any other person might wilt under the weight of that glare, but not Shiro. He knows when Keith is hiding something.   
  
Shiro considers this information. “I mean. You’re… the best pilot in the galaxy. You  _can’t_  be afraid of flying.”  
  
“It’s different when it’s not me doin’ the flying,” Keith grits out, shifting in the small seat. 

Shiro’s heart melts a little. He reaches over, pries Keith’s stiff fingers away from the lock and folds both his hands into his Altean one.   
  
“Keith. Keith, look at me.” Shiro reaches over to cup Keith’s cheek with his human hand, tilting his face around. “You’re fine.”  
  
When Keith doesn’t look convinced, Shiro leans over to kiss him lightly. They both get lost in it, in the warmth and closeness, in the little sound Keith makes in the back of his throat.   
  
Shiro draws his bottom lip into his mouth, letting his teeth graze lightly over its softness. He pushes his hand up over Keith’s cheek and fists it in his hair, dislodging several strands out of their messy ponytail. Over the sound of the plane’s engines revving up for takeoff, he can just make out the deep-chested purr vibrating through Keith’s whole body; probably Shiro’s favorite part of his Galra biology.   
  
If he could pull him into his lap right now, he would.   
  
He feels his stomach drop with vertical acceleration as the plane lifts off, carrying them out of the snow and the cold toward a whole week of sun-and-beach-filled shore leave.   
  
From the seats behind them, Hunk is experiencing one of his full-belly laughs Shiro is especially fond of, accompanied by the sound of Pidge smashing furiously at the small console game she brought. Lance and Allura are a captive audience a few rows ahead, where Coran is regaling them with a tale involving sea monsters and mermaids. (Lance perked up at the mention of mermaids, only to be met with a sharp elbow to the ribs from Allura).  
  
It’ll be good to get away from everything for a while. Good to spend some time with his family, to just relax and unwind. Good to see Keith in just his swimming trunks, and later, in nothing at all—  
  
He stops that train of thought before it goes too far, pulling away from the kiss and extracting his hand from Keith’s hair as the plane levels out.   
  
Keith still has his eyes closed, and swoons after Shiro as he pulls back. Shiro’s chest fills with warmth, and he can’t help but touch Keith again, his face, his hair, his shoulders. In his Altean hand, Keith’s palms are warm.   
  
“See?” Shiro says with a smile, “that wasn’t so bad.”  
  
Keith opens one eye a slit, peeking over Shiro’s shoulder at the rapidly disappearing string-lights lining the Garrison’s roads.   
  
He grumbles deep in his chest, sitting back. “Hmpf. Well, you’re just gonna have to kiss me every time we take off or land.”  
  
That, Shiro thinks, he can definitely do.


	3. family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Day 3 (Family)_  
>  **family**  
>   
>  Summary:
>
>> “Lance!” he growls in the general direction of the kitchen, “Would you please. Remove your offspring. From my person.”
>> 
>> “Aw, comon’ uncle Keef,” pleads a tiny voice in protest, ”You love us.”
>> 
>> “I tolerate you. Barely.”
>> 
>> Currently, Lance and Allura’s little girls are crawling over Keith where he’s prone on the living room carpet in their home, one clinging to his back while the other hugs his thrust-out arm somewhat like a koala.  
> 

To everyone’s surprise, Keith turns out to be really good with children. The Red Paladin himself is, perhaps, more surprised by this than anyone else, and will vehemently deny the fact if asked, of course.  
  
“Lance!” he growls in the general direction of the kitchen, “Would you please. Remove your offspring. From my person.”  
  
“Aw, comon’ uncle Keef,” pleads a tiny voice in protest, ”You love us.”  
  
“I tolerate you. Barely.”  
  
Currently, Lance and Allura’s little girls are crawling over Keith where he’s prone on the living room carpet in their home, one clinging to his back while the other hugs his thrust-out arm somewhat like a koala.   
  
“Show us how to disaaa, disah— take a droid’s gun away again!” one pleads; Shiro can’t be sure which it is. He watches them from where he leans in the kitchen doorway and can’t help but smile fondly at the sight.   
  
Lance is helping Allura with dinner, and Shiro had been firmly, if politely, ushered out of the kitchen. (It’s fine for Allura to attempt making baked potatoes, but when Shiro does it it’s “where’s the fire extinguisher“ and “how is it even possible to get potatoes on the  _ceiling_?!“).

They visit when they can. Keith is always grumbling that these short trips to earth are unnecessary and out of the way, and that the only things he needs are Shiro and the vast open universe to explore. But it’s also somehow always Keith that finds little trinkets to take the girls, exotic spices for Hunk’s cooking, or the latest Olkarian programming modules for Pidge’s supercomputer. 

Later, Keith will pretend to fall asleep on his stomach on the living room floor while Shiro updates Lance and Allura about the latest goings on in space, and the girls will crawl all over Keith and braid his hair and put little flowers in it. He’ll wake up and shoo them away and threaten violence upon whomever messed up his hair, and the more the girls giggle and try to hide, the more ridiculous his threats of bodily violence will become.   
  
Later, still, they’ll be getting ready for bed in the guest room, and Shiro will pointedly not comment about the fact that Keith still has the braids. They’ll fall asleep wrapped up tightly in each other, and wake the next morning to the sounds of Hunk arriving with breakfast scones and Lance tripping over Keith’s bayard where the girls had left it in the middle of the corridor after playing with it.   
  
And Shiro won’t say anything about how happy Keith looks, but he’ll add that unexpectedly sweet smile to his mental store of Keith smiles and when Keith buries his face in Shiro’s neck, mumbling “ten more minutes”, Shiro will sigh happily, content just to hold him and laze in the morning sun peeking through the curtains and marvel at this quiet peace he never imagined he’d have.   
  
And not much later than that, Allura’s girls will barge into the room and clamber onto the bed, and Shiro will laugh at Keith’s disgruntled expression and the way his hair sticks up wildly out of the braids, and when Keith chases them out of the room with a Galran growl, Shiro will follow more slowly to find Hunk and Pidge and Lance and Allura and Coran in the kitchen, and they’ll all clamor around for a hug, and he’ll never know how he got this lucky.


	4. the goodest boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Day 4 (Kosmo)_  
>  **the goodest boy**  
>   
>  Summary:
>
>> Keith holds him tightly and kisses his shoulder until the phantom pains slowly fade away, and Shiro would never _ask_ him for this, never allow himself to be that vulnerable, but somehow Keith is here anyway, like he always is. They lie down and he holds Shiro until he falls asleep again, secure in the exhausted knowledge that the nightmares won’t come back tonight.
>> 
>> The last thing he feels before dropping off is the warm weight of Kosmo settling against his legs.
>> 
>> In the safest place in the universe, between his two protectors, Shiro sleeps.  
> 

It gets worse when Keith’s away with the Blades.

Shiro won’t ever admit it, of course. In the morning, he’ll be pressed and dressed on the bridge of the Atlas at promptly 0600, and he’ll lead and advise and strategize. Just like every day. The people’s Shiro the Hero. But at night… the nightmares come. They come more often when the warmth of Keith’s body isn’t wrapped around him to keep them away.  

Tonight is worse than it’s been in a while.

He wakes in a cold sweat, echoes of the dream dissipating like dark tendrils from the back of his mind -  _harsh Galran commands and the clang of metal prison bars and his own voice screaming as they remove what’s left of his right arm and again later when he wakes to find cold metal eating into his shoulder -_ he’s breathing so hard, heart pounding, and his right shoulder is in agony.

He hisses, feeling his right hand contract with spasms, fingers taloning unwillingly. On the bedside table, the detached prosthetic sits, dark and quiet and unmoving. It’s not the Altean tech malfunctioning - it’s Shiro’s missing hand.

He hasn’t had the phantom pains in a while.

He doesn’t have the strength to activate the prosthetic - it would only add drag to the shoulder joint anyway, heavy and cumbersome. The most he can do is curl over himself, swallowing down the pained moan threatening to escape his throat and clutching at the metal biting into his shoulder with his human hand.

The telltale pop-and-flash of teleportation accompanies a sudden weight on his bed, large paws pressing into his thighs and then Kosmo is licking at his face. He smells like space and ozone and his fur is cold, but Shiro’s chest fills with warmth and lightness at the show of affection. He hugs what he can reach of the massive wolf tightly with one arm, squeezing his eyes shut and burying his face in the cold blue fur in relief. “Hey boy… hey there…”

He isn’t sure how Kosmo knew. He isn’t sure why the wolf would be here, and not Keith. It doesn’t matter - he’s a hundred pounds of affection in Shiro’s arm, and Shiro’s never been more thankful. Kosmo, for his part, seems to understand that Shiro needs this, because he doesn’t move, even though Shiro must be squeezing him quite uncomfortably. Gradually, his fur warms beneath Shiro’s cheek, and Shiro lets their shared heat seep into his soreness gratefully.

He doesn’t realize he’s been crying until Kosmo starts licking the tear-tracks from his cheeks. Embarrassed, Shiro wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, sitting back as the wolf squirms out of his grasp and hops off the bed. Shiro is about to protest when the bedroom door slides open with a hiss.

It’s Keith.

It’s his tired smile and his soft “Hi…” and his long hair clinging to his neck still wet from the shower and his grey sweatpants and his solid warmth nearly knocking Shiro over as he bundles onto the bed and into his lap for a kiss, passionate and desperate with how much Shiro wants to convey that he needed him, needed him more than he could ever admit out loud.

Keith holds him tightly and kisses his shoulder until the phantom pains slowly fade away, and Shiro would never  _ask_  him for this, never allow himself to be that vulnerable, but somehow Keith is here anyway, like he always is. They lie down and he holds Shiro until he falls asleep again, secure in the exhausted knowledge that the nightmares won’t come back tonight.

The last thing he feels before dropping off is the warm weight of Kosmo settling against his legs.

In the safest place in the universe, between his two protectors, Shiro sleeps.


	5. stargazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Day 5 (Free Day)_  
>  **stargazing**  
>   
>  Summary:
>
>> “Hey,” Keith answers, reaching out to touch his thigh lightly. In the back of his mind, Black purrs happily, her love for Shiro a large and shapeless and insistent thing on the forefront of their shared mindscape. Keith adds, “Black says hey, too.”
>> 
>> Shiro pets her nose in greeting, then runs his fingers over the gap of skin where Keith’s shirt has ridden up before resting his huge Altean palm on his stomach. It’s warm and hums lightly, and makes Keith’s whole body tingle with pleasure. He twines his fingers with Shiro’s in the dim hope that it would somehow make them even closer.
>> 
>> Above them, the first stars sprinkle themselves like powdered sugar across the darkening sky.  
> 

It doesn’t rain often in the desert. But it’s not too often that the sky is completely cloudless, either. Purple-blue stretches endlessly between horizons, unbroken and tinged orange-brown at the edges of the earth. Keith inhales deeply; the air smells like sand and desert brush and those tiny white flowers his dad used to put in a little vase in the living room. The early evening brings birdsong and the echoes of jet engines carried on the wind, and faint contrails left by the MFEs’ training flights outline the yellow blaze of the sunset right in front of him.

From far below and inside the Garrison walls, he can hear the sounds of his family - the tinkle of cutlery and laughter over an early dinner. Watching the sunset with Black had been more appealing to him than eating, and despite enjoying the company of the other Paladins, he’d needed some quiet time. Together, he and Black contemplated the peace brought by this brief respite in war, and then the nature of war in and of itself, and then nothing at all, content to just sit with each other in silence.

The breeze stirs Keith’s bangs; they tickle his cheeks. It’s starting to get cold, but below him, Black’s nose is baked with the pleasant warmth of the day, seeping into his back and thighs where he’s sprawled on top of her.

It’s a perfect moment. In fact, the only thing that could possibly improve it is—-

“Hey.”

Keith smiles as Shiro clambers up onto the Lion, boots clanging on metal before he sits down next to him. Black tilts her nose just slightly to compensate for the extra weight.

“Hey,” Keith answers, reaching out to touch his thigh lightly. In the back of his mind, Black purrs happily, her love for Shiro a large and shapeless and insistent thing on the forefront of their shared mindscape. Keith adds, “Black says hey, too.”

Shiro pets her nose in greeting, then runs his fingers over the gap of skin where Keith’s shirt has ridden up before resting his huge Altean palm on his stomach. It’s warm and hums lightly, and makes Keith’s whole body tingle with pleasure. He twines his fingers with Shiro’s in the dim hope that it would somehow make them even closer.

Above them, the first stars sprinkle themselves like powdered sugar across the darkening sky.

Shiro squeezes his hand. “Missed you back there.”

“Wasn’t hungry,” Keith answers with a noncommittal shrug.

“You okay?”

Keith nods. “Just… needed some quiet.”

Shiro lies down next to him, floating his arm around the other way so he can keep holding Keith’s hand. It’s dark enough for his face to be cast in shadow where his arm port is starting to glow brighter than the light outside.

Keith turns to simply admire him, staring at the planes of his face, the slope of his nose, how his silver hair very slightly picks up the hues of the sunset.

In a while, Shiro becomes self-conscious, turning to look at him almost shyly. “…What.”

“Nothin’… Just… beautiful out here, that’s all.”

Shiro smiles, and leans over to kiss him. “Love you too.”

Beneath them, Black purrs happily, settling down to keep her Paladins company for the night.


	6. a flower in the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Day 6 (The past)_  
>  **a flower in the night**  
>   
>  Summary:
>
>> It comes in stages, that long night, as Keith moves around him and takes care of him and never, ever lets go of him. A realization in bits and pieces. Has Keith always been this strong? Has he always been this beautiful? Has Shiro’s heart always skipped a beat at seeing him smile? Has he ever wondered what he’d taste like, what it’d feel like to be inside him, to hear him cry out his name?
>> 
>> It’s a slow epiphany, if epiphanies were quiet things that uncurled inside your chest and grew like warm velvet flowers in your throat until they poured out of your mouth inevitably, unstoppably.
>> 
>> He loves him. God, he loves him.  
> 

Shiro only means to close his eyes for a second.

But when he wakes up again, it’s gone dark, the quiet harsh rocks and looming animal threats of the strange desert planet they find themselves on kept at bay by the light of the fire now burning a few feet away.

The world blurs, and Shiro’s memory comes in fits -  _snarling maws filled with sharp teeth and even sharper claws gouging out his hiding place and Black somehow being there despite all the odds and Keith somehow bringing her and_  —

then, just

nothing.

He closes his eyes again when the rock formations in the distance warp, fighting a wave of nausea. The wound in his side has dulled to a low, if insistent throb. That’s probably not good. They’re stranded, without food and without aid and without hope.

But… he’s resting against something warm and solid, and despite everything, he marvels at the fact that he feels…  _safe_.

He doesn’t move yet - can’t, really, and doesn’t much want to, anyway. He’s dangerously comfortable, and he knows it’s probably partly because he’s gone into shock and that he needs to stay aware and alert in case the creatures come back, but.

But he’s so, so tired.

Slowly, he becomes aware of a low voice humming near his ear.

Keith.

Shiro smiles slightly. The humming stops, and the body beneath him shifts, pushing him away lightly. Cold fingers press gently just below the wound in Shiro’s side. Somehow, Keith knows he’s awake.

Shiro has to try a few times to get his voice working. “What’re you… singing?” (It’s too much work to open his eyes, so he just keeps them closed.)

“… Nothin’. Just this really old song that’s always reminded me of you.”

“Have a beautiful voice.”

Shiro freezes. Did he really just say that out loud? By the way Keith’s gone still against him, he guesses he did. He examines the statement and finds that he means it. Keith’s voice is beautiful. A lot of things about him are.

He hears Keith grumble something less than polite, and feels him fuss around. The desert air is cold, the sense of danger an insistent presence outside the safety of Keith’s arms. When he manages to open his eyes Shiro sees blurry stop-motion snapshots of distant icy white stars, steam rising in silent columns from ruptured underground geysers, and the violet of Keith’s eyes, and the curve of his cupid’s bow, and how pale the skin of his neck is where it disappears into his undersuit.

In one of Shiro’s more lucid moments, he wakes to find Keith’s fingers blessedly cool again on the inflamed skin around the wound.

“That’s probably gonna scar.”

Shiro wants to answer, wants to crack the kind of bad joke he knows Keith will cringe at but secretly find funny, but he’s shaking too hard, body wracked with shock and the cold, cold desert night.

Keith makes a little distressed sound, gathering Shiro up in his arms. “We gotta get you warmed up.”

Shiro clutches at Keith’s forearms, back curving gratefully into the heat of his chest. “W-we could, could always t-take off our arm– armor… share b-body heat…”

Keith doesn’t let up his grip on Shiro, but he pauses, and Shiro can hear the frown in his voice when he answers, “Shiro. You can’t… just say things like that…”

“Guess n-no one would wanna see, see a n-naked, scarred old m-man’s body,” Shiro manages between chattering teeth, and then, when Keith doesn’t rise to the joke, “…Sorry…?”

Keith clicks his tongue at him, and calls him delirious, and tucks Shiro under one arm, settling back against his rock and poking at the fire with a long stick.

It comes in stages, that long night, as Keith moves around him and takes care of him and never, ever lets go of him. A realization in bits and pieces. Has Keith always been this strong? Has he always been this beautiful? Has Shiro’s heart always skipped a beat at seeing him smile? Has he ever wondered what he’d taste like, what it’d feel like to be inside him, to hear him cry out his name?

It’s a slow epiphany, if epiphanies were quiet things that uncurled inside your chest and grew like warm velvet flowers in your throat until they poured out of your mouth inevitably, unstoppably.

He loves him. God, he loves him.

It’s the last thing on his mind as he falls back into fitful sleep, and the first thing on his mind when he wakes up to the purple dawn of the strange planet and the Green Lion descending through the clouds and Keith getting excitedly to his feet.

It’s not until much later, back on the Castle of Lions, that Keith gathers up the courage to ask, “Did you mean it? Were you… lucid?”, and Shiro realizes he’d said it out loud.

“Of course I meant it,” he says, trying to put as much honesty into his tired voice as he can because Keith tends to run more easily than he trusts. And when Keith comes to him, he feels like he was always meant to fit against Shiro, a more natural extension of himself than his Galran arm.

And much, much later, Keith will jokingly tell him he likes seeing his naked, scarred old-man body very much, and he’ll say it from the vicinity of Shiro’s stomach before dipping lower, and Shiro won’t be able to answer at all.

And afterwards, they’ll lie together in the small little bunk in their quarters on the Atlas, and Keith will hum the same melody, and when Shiro asks him about it, he won’t answer, but kiss him instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re interested, [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svyLMR7yjhU) is the song Keith was humming.
> 
> _“Honey, it’s in the stars_  
>  And you’re my everything from here to Mars  
> And every word I say I truly mean  
> Dear darling, I hope I’m being clear  
> ‘Cause there’s no one like you on earth  
> That can be my universe” 
> 
> 💕


	7. a softer epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Day 7 (the future)_  
>  **a softer epilogue**  
>   
>  Excerpt:
>
>> Keith turns down the position of Head Blade multiple times. Instead, he starts a school for orphans, which he visits frequently during his and Shiro’s travels (the cadets fall over their feet to train with him, and when Shiro joins him, they get swamped by eager fans for days). The school becomes a chain of schools, becomes a home for the homeless in every star system in the galaxy.
>> 
>> They find peace. They’re happy.  
> 

A few things change:

They no longer take two hover bikes out for desert sunset rides. Instead, Keith clings to Shiro’s back with his arms tightly around his waist and rests his cheek on his broad back.

They don’t fight anymore. The war ends, and eventually the universe settles into hesitant peace, and eventually, starts to prosper.

Lance and Allura marry, and have children.

Keith and Shiro don’t. They leave earth and their past and everything else behind for the vastness of the universe, and they visit sometimes but they never go back.

Keith stops running.

Shiro eventually leaves the Galran fighting pits and the Champion behind and learns to accept his prosthetic as part of his body, rather than a weapon. He learns how to live without the constant burden of a mortal illness, without having to fight, without having to lead.

He still takes up his role as Admiral Shirogane when needed. Diplomatic talks have a way of resolving themselves twice as fast with his insight. Mostly, he just does it so he can visit the Atlas, who - after everything - still loves him above anything else and will butt into his mindscape at the first opportunity when they are in the same system.

He takes up cooking. He’s terrible at it.

Keith loves it anyway.

Keith turns down the position of Head Blade multiple times. Instead, he starts a school for orphans, which he visits frequently during his and Shiro’s travels (the cadets fall over their feet to train with him, and when Shiro joins him, they get swamped by eager fans for days). The school becomes a chain of schools, becomes a home for the homeless in every star system in the galaxy.

They find peace. They’re happy.

 

Some things never change:

Keith still sees the Black Lion in his dreams sometimes. In the morning he’ll wake up with the comforting weight of Shiro’s arm around his waist, and he won’t say anything, but Shiro will know he’s had the dream anyway and gather him into a bundle and kiss his hair.

The space wolf steals food off their plates and steals Shiro’s socks. He sleeps on the foot of their bed, draped across their ankles. When he becomes too huge to fit, they get a bigger bed.

Keith still sleeps in crazy positions. Shiro wakes up with Keith’s fingers in his nose, or a foot in his stomach. Once, he wakes up to find Keith dangerously close to the edge of the bed, and when he pulls him back and to his chest, Keith starts purring and presses into Shiro and licks his neck, and they don’t leave the bedroom for a whole day.

They don’t stop fighting. They love the adrenaline, the action. They spar with each other, with repurposed Galra sentries, with cadets at the school. Once, Shiro pins Keith down and they both flash back to the clone facility, and they slowly get up, and Keith pulls Shiro close, and Shiro doesn’t say “ _I’m sorry_ ”, and Keith doesn’t say “ _I know_ ”.

Shiro still likes his coffee black, no sugar. Keith adds five teaspoons at a bare minimum, and when Shiro kisses him, he tastes syrupy and dark and delicious.

They love each other. They’re happy.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/solooutomg) and [tumblr](https://narada-talis.tumblr.com/)~


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